Pages

Miss Rumphius proposed a poetry challenge on Monday, and I gave it a try... after five days. Not that I’m so good at poetry  or challenges, for that matter  but really, what else am I doing? She chose to write a bouts-rimés, where someone else supplies the rhyming words and you supply the poem. The words are:

nest, rest, flight, sight, flower, hour, wing, sing

Here is my delightful work accomplished at the reference desk in between patrons’ questions. (What is it with these people at the library and their needs? Yeesh.) Oh, and I switched flower and hour and made them plural. Can I do that? Anyway, here goes nothing.

One day my girls will leave the nest,And I’ll have time to clean and rest.I’ll cheer them on as they take flight,But while I have them in my sight...Shirking chores, we’ll splurge these hoursOn riding bikes, picking flowers,Studying a dragonfly wing,Reading outside as crickets sing.

In my Jane Austen research, I've learned that it was a favorite parlor game at the Austen household -- only they'd go with a single word (like rose) and have to rhyme every line to that word. Mrs. Austen dominated at that particular game.

I'm learning something as I play with poetry. I can't tell if what I've written is any good. I get no sixth sense on it at all. But I think that Poets with the capital P do have that sense. However, I know when I write something funny. I think it's a similar kind of sixth sense.

Now I felt quite comfortable with my entry to this photo poem prompt. Why? Because it was the funny aspect that hit me first.

"Can I do that?" You KNOW you can, MR. And you DID. And didn't you just write "Housework be damned, there are crickets"? Uh, huh. You know the rules, and you're breaking them, left and right. Welcome to poetry, the twin sister to that other rule-breaker, humor. You three are going to get along like firecrackers.

The Rundown

One of the bestselling preschool books of recent times was Walter the Farting Dog. At the same time, the American Library Association named as one of its best books Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, a book in which Mr. Rosen talks about his despair over the death of his son. I believe that, for most of us, what we want lies somewhere between a flatulent canine and overwhelming grief.